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ILLEGAL ALIENS
Nick Pollotta & Phil Foglio A publication of Wildside Press P.O. Box 301
Holicong, PA. 18928-0301
Copyright 1988, 2002 by Nick Pollotta & Phil Foglio To contact:
www.NickPollotta.com To contact: www.StudioFoglio.com All rights reserved.
Cover by Phil Foglio No portion of this book may be reproduced by any
means electronic or otherwise, without first obtaining the written consent
of the authors.
DEDICATION
To radio plays, common interests, mutual respect and a twenty-five-year friendship
going on forever.
Yeah, what the hell.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
THE UNITED NATIONS FIRST CONTACT TEAM
Prof. Sigerson Rajavur—Icelandic diplomat in charge of the FCT.
Brigadier General Wayne Bronson—American soldier assigned to defend the
UN team.
Dr. Yuki Wu—Chinese physicist, scientific advisor to the FCT.
Dr. Mohad Malavade—India's top philologist, and an expert in interspecies
communication.
Sir Jonathan Courtney—Scottish sociologist, self-made millionaire.
General Nicholi Nicholi—Russian soldier in charge of the Earth Defense Forces.
THE ALIENS
Idow—Leader
Gasterphaz—Protector Boztwank—Engineer
Squee—Communicator Trell—Technician
THE BLOODY DECKERS
Hammer—lord of the New York City street gang.
Drill—his lieutenant.
Whipsaw—legbreaker.
Crowbar—ex-biker.
Chisel—knife expert.
Torch—alley mugger.
THE GREAT GOLDEN ONES
Avantor—the guardian of Sol III.
The 17—her primary assistant.
THE REST
Amanda Jackson—lieutenant, New York Police SWAT.
Robert Weis—colonel, NATO forces.
Delores Bolivar—receptionist.
Francis McDougherty—Accounting Dept. manager.
Hector Ramariez—an accountant.
William Peterson—Chief of Police, Manhattan Central, NYPD.
Emile Valois—Secretary-General of the United Nations.
NATO—North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Agent Taurus—a living nuclear weapon.
Agent Virgo—a nuclear counter-agent.
FAMOUS EARTH SAYING: Speak softly, but carry a big stick.
FAMOUS GALACTIC SAYING: Hail the Prime Builder, and activate
the Proton Cannon.
UNIVERSAL TRUTH: Innocence is no protection.
BOOK ONE: ON EARTH
PROLOGUE
CRACK!The rocketing softball dwindled into the blue New York sky as the
grinning batter dropped his stick on home plate and took off for first base like a
man with his pants on fire.
“I ... I got it!” Hector Ramariez gamely cried, his skinny legs backpedaling him
furiously into the weedy grass of center field.
His teammates relaxing over by the trees that edged the Central Park ballfield,
stridently voiced their differing opinions on this matter. Hector was the pariah of
their team, a well meaning, but ineffective weenie.
Like a leather radar dish, the cost accountant's never-before-used softball mitt
tracked the white ball until it became lost in the glare of the August sun. Filled with
remorse, Ramariez swallowed what little hope he had of emerging from this game
with his precious dignity intact. This was the last game in the summer play-offs
between the different departments of the Gunderson Corporation; and to
everyone's unmitigated surprise, the Accounting Department (Hector's team) was
in the lead, with the score at 2 to 0, the bases loaded, two outs, bottom of the ninth.
The Accounting team captain, Francis ‘Scrooge’ McDougherty, had been so sure
of a victory that the old skinflint had already phoned in an order for their victory
pizzas using his own quarter.
Then disaster struck in the form of a pop fly ball to Hector.
With a feeling of impending doom, Ramariez licked salty sweat from his lips and
scanned the empty sky above him. Somehow, he could feel McDougherty's piggy
eyes burning into him like twin lasers beams. It made the poor accountant's stomach
churn with nervous acid. If Hector made this catch, his team won. If he didn't, they
lost. It was that simple, and Ramariez knew just how badly his boss wanted that
company trophy. With his own arthritic hands, McDougherty had retrieved a
wooden display case from the dungeon-like basement of their office building, and
painstakingly scrubbed, painted and polished the box back into its original pristine
condition. Gleaming like an oiled jewel, the wooden case now sat in front of
McDougherty's office, eagerly awaiting the company's silver loving cup to be placed
into its velvet innards.
Oh, my goodness gracious,Ramariez thought in genuine panic.Mr. McDougherty
will blame me personally for this disaster and there is no telling what he might
do. Why, he might even send me back to ... Payroll! The accountant felt himself
grow faint. The Payroll Department, a fate worse then death.
Dancing frantically about in the dry weeds, Hector hopelessly tried to align himself
under a falling ball that he couldn't even see. Where was the gosh darn thing
anyway? With painful clarity, he could hear the raucous laughter of his rude co-
workers at his blatant incompetence, but what was there to do? The ball had
vanished. It was nowhere in sight.
A monumentally shy man, Ramariez had never been under such unrelenting pressure
to perform before in his life. Not since his mother had given him 24 hours in which to
learn to dress himself before he left for college.
In his vivid imagination, Hector could feel the tension in the air as if it was a static
electric charge. He half expected sparks to start crackling off him. Blood pounded in
his temples and an agonizing knot formed in his chest. Then he ruefully smiled.
Weren't those the symptoms of a heart attack? Perfect! Death before dishonor!
Anything, rather than incur the wrath of Mr. McDougherty, and be the fool in front
of Ms. Bolivar.
Delores Bolivar, the beautiful receptionist for the Gunderson Corporation, had
actually agreed to have a drink with the timid accountant after the game. But would
the sultry Ms. Bolivar still wish to share a soda with the bumbling fool who dropped
the game winning catch and brought shame and disgrace upon the Accounting
Department? Hector seriously thought not.
The annoying catcalls from his fellow employees got noticeably louder. Heroically
trying to ignore them, Hector prayed for salvation ... and there was the ball,
plummeting towards him from the sun! Hastily scrambling, the accountant got into
position, his stiff leather glove raised for the game winning catch. Watch this world!
A hero at last! Hector Ramariez saves the day. Ticker tape parades, lunch with the
mayor, a date with Delores, nothing was too good for— But suddenly, the
impolite noises from his co-workers changed into raw-throated screams of terror,
and hurriedly both teams began fleeing the park like roaches from bug spray. Quite
puzzled, Hector squinted skyward at the source of their dismay. There in the air
above him, ever expanding in size, was the missing softball. He blinked, and the
ball swelled to the size of a stove ... a truck ... a house! A harsh buzzing sound
filled the air. The pale hair on his skinny arms stiffly rose. Then darkness enveloped
the man as the impossible sphere eclipsed the sun.
Ramariez glanced down and found that he was standing dead center in an ever-
widening pool of black shadow. Quickly, he performed the short algebra equation
(v x d x N = Y are you still here?) and then began running for his life, sprinting for
that thin line which separated merely contemplating Heaven from finding out about it
in person. All thoughts of the game, his job, and even Delores were totally replaced
by the primordial urge for self-preservation and the overwhelming desire not to be
crushed to death by a giant flying softball in Central Park, New York.
Unaccustomed to physical exertion, Ramariez was soon gasping for breath as he
raced for the shadow's boundary, but it eluded him with nightmarish speed. In raw
desperation, he cast his glove away and dashed forward in a last frantic burst of
speed. But it was too little, too late.
Larger than the fist of God, the titanic white globe slammed directly onto the
pitcher's mound, displacing tons of dirt in an earthy tidal wave that swept the
screaming accountant off his feet and hurtled him through the air, tumbling debts
over assets, to jarringly crash into the top of an old elm tree more than four blocks
away.
Bruised, battered, and broken in spirit, Ramariez awoke dangling from a branch.
Howling like an animal, the crazed accountant clawed his way through the crushed
foliage and fell sprawling to the still trembling ground. Without a moment's
hesitation, Hector Ramariez dashed pell-mell down one of the park's numerous bike
paths, made it to the traffic filled streets, and disappeared into the concrete canyons
of New York City, never to be seen or heard from again by the civilized world.
Resembling a white Ping-Pong ball sitting in the grass, the gargantuan sphere
towered over the tall Central Park trees, completely filling the space allocated to the
recreational field. The highly polished hull of the ship glistening with pearlesence in
the bright afternoon sun. There it sat, this strange white invader, and did absolutely
nothing for thirty terrestrial minutes. Ever so slowly, a crowd began to form about
the base of the staggeringly immense globe, the brave and the foolish leading the
way.
Ironically enough, it was Delores Bolivar who first discovered the invisible force
shield encircling the alien craft. She did this empirically, by bouncing her face off of
the barrier. Tears flowed unchecked past her bruised nose, and comfort was offered
to her by sympathetic members of the crowd. Sympathy that rapidly changed to
moral outrage when they realized what she was pointing to on the other side of the
transparent barrier; a mangled baseball mitt that lay, pitifully half-buried in the
rubble beneath the monstrous ball.
The force shield had the feel of lightly padded steel, and proved to be quite
invulnerable to the delicate fists of Delores, the pounding baseball bats of Hector's
teammates and the .38 bullet fired from a rookie patrolman's service revolver. Yes,
New York's finest had at last arrived, after some unsung genius dialed 911 and
reported a very illegally parked vehicle.
Soon the police swarmed in by the dozens, valiantly trying to control a crowd that
poured in by the thousands. SWAT team helicopters battled with TV news
choppers for air space supremacy above the killer spaceship. Forcibly the
multitude was pushed back and a safety perimeter established around the ship, to
the great annoyance of the unauthorized onlookers. The crowd started to turn ugly
and shouting matches began. But then the street venders arrived and quickly
restored a semblance of order to the gathering with their overpriced hot dogs, ice
cream and “I SAW THE ALIEN SPACESHIP” T-shirts.
Meanwhile, deep within the bowels of the mountainous craft, weird machines of
crystal and silver began to stir. Hot power poured through molecular cables,
complex circuit cubes instantly relayed multiple commands, unnamable alien
devices did unnamable alien things, and finally a robot sensor awoke to focus its
attention on the tumultuous assemblage outside. A translucent energy ray lanced
out from the top of the starship, and the alien machine proceeded to scan that
emotional human sea much the same way that a lighthouse fans the ocean with its
beacon of light.
Unseen and unfelt, the ethereal sensor probed the nearest humans; paying scant
attention to the sobbing Delores, the grim police, the aghast pizza delivery boy, the
shocked, the frightened, and the astonished. Implacably steady, the beam extended
its zone of inquiry, testing hundreds after hundreds of human beings, but all were
found wanting. Until at last, the probe came to a group of six individuals who viewed
the great ship dispassionately, and apparently without fear. They were a small island
of calm in the bubbling emotional soup. Dutifully, the machine paused on them,
allowing its beam to seep into their living minds and read their secret innermost
thoughts. When it was satisfied, the alien machine withdrew the unfelt probe and
sent a priority message to its masters who had been impatiently waiting for a report.
“These?” the robot asked Those-Who-Command.
A conversation was held.
A question asked.
A decision made.
“Yes,” came the answer. “Them."
Instantly, the six humans were bombarded with space-twisting forces,
compared to which a nuclear explosion would be a candle to the sun, and they
vanished in a burst of light that seared ghostly after-images into the retinas of
everybody near them.
Most of the distant crowd mistook the flash to be a reporter's camera, but those
closer knew better, and Central Park became a madhouse as thousands tried to flee
at the exact same time. Clothes were ripped. Women cursed. Strong men fainted.
Fistfights broke out left and right. The park degenerated into a madhouse, a riot.
Pandemonium ruled!
Serenely indifferent to the screaming hordes just outside its force shield, the starship
began to broadcast a message on every frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum.
A signal of such tremendous strength that it was received by television and radio sets
even if they were not turned on. A message so startling, so fantastic, that most of the
listening world began to chuckle, believing this to be a juvenile rehash of an old
classic science fiction radio program.
But then the incredible broadcast began to endlessly repeat over and over...
ONE
In imposing silence, the committee sat around the heavy oak table reviewing plastic
coated documents of extreme importance.
At the head of the table was a scholarly gentleman, a gray-haired diplomat from
Iceland in a neat navy blue suit, the permanent leader of this special task force. To
his left was an American general, splendid in his decorated uniform, with only a hint
of ash on his right lapel, deposited there from his ever present cigar. Across from
him was his Russian counterpart, possessing the solid body of a peasant heritage
and a brilliant military mind that had earned him this position on the council. Next to
him was a Scotsman, impeccably dressed in a tailored, three piece gray suit that fit
his bearing as a self-made millionaire and prominent sociologist.
Adorning the end of the table was a beautiful Chinese physicist in a soft summer
dress decorated with a floral design, her long black hair worn loose about her
shoulders. It was she who spoke first, breaking their somber concentration.
